Building in miniature

February 04, 2002|By Hillary Dickerson

From the first four-room, two-story house to eventual additions, other houses and simple rooms, Sanders has tried her hand at almost everything. And when she found a neighbor down the street who did ceramics and was interested in miniatures, Sanders really lucked out.

While Sanders was still living downstate - before the couple moved north in 1991 - she and her friend spent hours creating the most imaginative pieces possible and traveling to several miniature shows each year throughout the Midwest. They made dishes, dolls, rugs, quilts and more.

As she stood in the basement of the home she shares with her husband, Vincent, overlooking Caulkins Lake, Sanders showed off the beautiful, meticulous results of hours and hours of careful labor. Even to the casual observer, a person knows immediately this is a woman with a great deal of patience and dedication.

Obviously proud of his wife's work, Vincent admitted he encouraged her to scale her work down from the traditional 1/12 scale for dollhouse productions to a scale one-quarter of that to save room.

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Off one of the display shelves in her workroom, Sanders pulled a quarter-scale church she'd made, complete with tiny blue hymnals placed neatly on each pew. Stained-glass windows put the finishing touches on the small, but very realistic looking, building.

And then there was her schoolhouse. Not only were there all the typical items one would expect - books and desks - but the wastebasket next to the teacher's desk even had "waste" to fill it, so that a person looking in couldn't help but be transported back to the era of the one-room schoolhouse.

Just so Vincent wouldn't feel completely left out, Sanders even made a garage for the more masculine taste. In addition to the car parked in the middle of the miniature room, there were tools placed neatly on the shelves lining the wall - the things a person would expect to see when the garage door opened.

There are all sorts of things to consider when peering through the windows or looking at all the detail from the open back or roof. "It's just all her own imagination," said Vincent.

But Sanders quickly noted that her view of the world is very different since the search is always on for new ideas and innovative miniature techniques. Perhaps the best examples are the liquor bottles lining the pub shelves in one room. Upon closer look, a person still can barely tell that the bottles are small light bulbs adapted for a much different purpose.

Her husband quickly chimed in with another memorable story they like to recall. For three hours one day, Sanders had been working on tiny cherry pies, making them out of bread dough and a special chemical, Vincent explained. Near the end of the project, she walked away for a few minutes. Upon her return, she discovered that the couple's dog had been tempted long enough by the looks of the pie and chowed down on them. Luckily, it was a small enough amount of chemical that the dog wasn't harmed, but still the hours of labor were lost. She went back to work, unfazed.

With most hobbies there is a price, but miniatures, in particular, are expensive. While she and her downstate friend were in business, they actually made money. There are people, however, who purchase all the furnishings for their rooms and spend hundreds of dollars in the process.

Sanders has an entrepreneuring spirit. Instead of indulging in premade goods, she bought inexpensive kits and started from scratch. For a bed, for instance, she'd make the mattress, the pillows and the quilt. When the product was perfect, Sanders would take the bed to a show and sell it for a lot more money than she'd spent making it.

Displayed in another downstairs bedroom is the dollhouse Vincent built and Sanders decorated for their twin granddaughters, who are now in college. Although the dollhouse made its way back to Grandma and Grandpa's, the plan is to pass it along before too long to their 8-year-old granddaughter who just can't wait to take it home with her.

When she's finished with the house, it will be given back to the twins who hope to share it with their daughters someday. "It's going to be a family heirloom," concluded Sanders.